Société Générale S.A. (French: [sɔsjete ʒeneʁal]), colloquially known in English as SocGen (French: [sɔk ʒɛn]),[3] is a French-based multinational financial services company founded in 1864, registered in downtown Paris and headquartered nearby in La Défense.
Société Générale is France’s third largest bank by total assets after BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole.[4] It is also the sixth largest bank in Europe and the world’s eighteenth.[4] It is considered a systemically important bank by the Financial Stability Board.
From 1966 to 2003 it was known as one of the Trois Vieilles (“Old Three”) major French commercial banks, along with Banque Nationale de Paris (from 2000 BNP Paribas) and Crédit Lyonnais.